Sunday, April 27, 2008

Update on the Harley cake...

Staying up till 3am to decorate cakes equals one TIRED girl... but will make two AWESOME cakes! The Harley Davidson cake turned out great! I wasn't as proud of the daisy cake as what I had in my mind, but it came out good, too. Everyone raved about the Harley cake - let's hope it gets some requests for future cakes! While I do like the "pretty" cakes, I definitely found that I love to do specialty cakes. I get to be much more creative with them. Onto the photos... Enjoy!

Harley cake: Yellow cake with double chocolate chip filling, chocolate buttercream icing.
Daisy cake: Bottom layer: white cake with buttercream filling; Top layer: White cake with lemon buttercream filling



Great tool!


In our cake class, our instructor had an awesome icing bag holder from Wilton, but is now discontinued. After class, mom and I went to Target for a few things, and on an endcap were a bunch of snow-cone making supplies.... including this snow cone holder. And they are PERFECT for icing bags as well! Go grab one for yourself, there's 4 in a box for about 5 bucks.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

If I wanted to spend $35 on a shirt....

I'd get one of these cute shirts from Johnny's Cupcakes

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Tattoo on the lower back??

This Sunday, I went to a passions party hosted by one of my good friends, so of course I had to bring along some cute cupcakes! My mom and I have started using every get-together as an opportunity to get creative and practice, practice, practice.

I had wanted to do bustier cupcakes that filled out the entire cupcake, and I found Whoppers that I thought would do the trick for the "girls," but it failed.

So, after about an hour of testing out different designs on the "bad" cupcakes (we had 11 to practice on - I only needed 13), we finally got the perfect "pair" :) And from two women who weren't graced with the "goods," I think we got it down pretty well!

The bustier's and thongs are all icing (the butts and girls are just a coupler without a tip on it), the bras are hershey's kisses (the peak cut down) covered in frosting, with sprinkle accents on them.


Gotta love the tattoo on the lower back. That was alll mom's idea. I love how the butt icing has dimples in it, too. We go for real-life in our kitchen :)

Mom, definately a bonding (and hilarious!) experience to make naughty cupcakes with ya.

BIG weekend this week. The in-laws anniversary is on Saturday, gotta get crackin' on the two-layer daisy cake and Harley masterpiece. Gotta get through the work week first, though...

Friday, April 18, 2008

daily inspiration.

found this quote and I just had to share...

"Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun." - Mary Lou Cook

Vroom Vroom

...if you were wondering, that's the sound of the KS Speedway. :)

Mom did this cake last night for her co-worker that loves Nascar.
8"oval cake
Yellow cake mix, Chocolate chunk filling, buttercream frosting and piped accents
Nascar cake toppers

Race Track is crushed oreos.



Great work, Mom!!

Late Post: Easter Cookies

My mom is amazing at decoraing sugar cookies... i'm not :) So, this easter she made easter cookies and created a neat display for the brunch centerpiece!




Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Cupcake Milestone!


My mom and I created, what I think to be, the CUTEST cupcakes for my grandma - she turned the big 75 on the 5th. We decided to give her an extra-special birthday cake - a cupcake tower filled with cupcakes in the themes of everything she loves: Sewing, quilting, playing card games, Farkel (dice game), and dominoes, eating JUNK FOOD (definitely where I got my sweet tooth), and dogs.

It took us 4 hours to decorate them, and only a two minor tip-overs on the 6-hour trip up to Davenport, IA (we highly recommend the wilton cupcake holder!), but she absolutely loved them. Here's the rundown of what we used:


Cupcakes
: chocolate and white box mix. Icing: Buttercream icing

Bottom Row... Hobby cupcakes...
Sewing cupcakes: thin layer of frosting, fondant scissors and bobbin, icing gel thread accent
Quilt cupcakes: all icing... Make a box and triangles, then just fill it in. Sprinkle accents
Dominoes cupcakes: almond-bark covered graham cracker with black buttercream icing accents
Farkel (Dice) cupcakes: cube-shaped fondant with black buttercream for the dots. By far the hardest to make. Oh yes, and I even looked at a real die to get the numbers correct :)
Deck of Cards cupcakes: fondant, red icing gel numbers. Remember to not use the ace of spades, that's bad luck :)

Second-from the bottom Row... Junk Food Cupcakes...
Most of these are pretty self-explanatory...
Popcorn cupcakes: wrapper is just printed out from a Word document, but put this on last. For the kernels, take mini marshmallows and cut them in half (hamburger-wise), then squish them back together again. I laid them out on wax paper and sprayed them lightly with Wilton Color Mist spray, so they weren't all completely covered. You could also use yellow marshmallows i guess...
Chex mix cupcakes - got the peanut butter chocolate lovers kind. They taste like puppy chow!
Candy cupcakes - set some mini hershey's on there and you're good to go.
Cookie Cupcakes - got the little individual packs of oreo, chips ahoy, and the keebler striped cookies.

Second-from the top Row... Dog Cupcakes...
I got this from the Family Fun magazine, or you can find them on Hello Cupcake (and their book has a ton more).

These were just too fun to make. I definitely loved getting creative and we brainstormed so much on trying to figure out what to use for each part! I look forward to making more of these! Oh, and Happy Birthday, Grandma! :)